Not Just Rooftops: Basement Farms Taking Root in Brooklyn

First it was rooftops, now it's basements - indoor hydroponic farming seems to be on the rise in Brooklyn. Bushwick's Boswyck Farms is working with several local food pantries to install hydroponic farming systems. The farm inside Bed Stuy's Child Development Support Corp. (pictured) has been growing greens since May.

While Brooklyn Grange’s expansion to a second rooftop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard might be a sign that rooftop farming is here to stay, there’s another kind of urban agriculture on the rise – indoor farms.

The Daily News ran a story yesterday on the booming indoor hydroponic farm at Child Development Support Corporation, a community center on Classon Avenue in Bed-Stuy. CDSC operates a pantry to provide food to local families in need. When they connected with Lee Mandell, the founder of Bushwick’s Boswyck Farms, they decided to grow their own.

Boswyck Farms, founded in 2008, is an indoor hydroponic farm and an organization dedicated to spreading the hydroponic gospel. Hydroponic farming requires no soil – the plants grow in nutrient-enriched water. Indoor systems use grow lights as a substitute for sunlight. CDSC worked with Mandell to install three double-tiered sixty foot long growing shelves below powerful grow lights, and they’ve been harvesting lettuce, bok choy and collard greens since May.

Boswyck Farms ‘broke ground’ on another indoor farm in the basement of Los Sures, a Williamsburg food pantry, last week, and the Daily News reports that several other pantries are working with Boswyck to secure funding for their own indoor farm installations.